The development of subterranean operations and the processes involved in removing hydrocarbons from a subterranean formation typically involve a number of different steps, including but not limited to, drilling a wellbore at a desired well site, in some cases fortifying the wellbore to prevent its collapse, and treating the region immediately adjacent the wellbore to enhance the recovery of the hydrocarbons from the formation into the wellbore. There are a number of different ways of enhancing the recovery the hydrocarbons from the subterranean formation once the wellbore has been drilled into the region of interest. Over the past decade or so, hydraulic fracturing has become one of the widely accepted techniques for optimizing the recovery of these hydrocarbons from subterranean formations because it expands the number and length of pathways for the oil and gas to make their way from the subterranean formation to the wellbore for subsequent recovery.
Presently, there are many wells that were hydraulically fractured, which are producing much less than they had previously or never produced as expected. Such wells include wells which were completed early in a specific field's development, for example, when little was known about how the specific field behaved, wells where insufficient proppant was placed in the fractures initially, wells where high production rates caused fracture collapse, and/or wells where perforations were spaced too widely. Many of these wells still have sufficient oil and gas worth recovering. Indeed, operators stand to benefit from refracturing many of these wells. However, before these wells can be refractured, the existing perforations have to be sealed so that the fracturing treatment is delivered to the new perforations and not lost through into the formation through the old perforations. Accordingly, there is a need for a method and/or apparatus for sealing these existing perforations so that the formation can be reperforated and refractured in new and more productive zones.